Situational crime prevention against cyberfraud: A case study of China's anti-fraud centres

Cyberfraud is turning into a transnational organised cybercrime, which creates tremendous conundrums for criminal justice systems in the global context. The current study examines the utility of the situational crime prevention (SCP) framework in combating this ‘wicked problem’, which has been advocated for years but remains empirically underdeveloped. Using China's anti-fraud centres (AFCs) as a case study, this research provides the Global South perspectives from the interviews with 21 Chinese police officers. The findings show the nuanced practices implemented by the AFCs under each major SCP component, such as routinised cyberfraud campaigns (increase risks), cyberfraud blacklists (increase effort), victim-focused interventions (reduce rewards), hot-spot regulation (remove provocations), and multi-situational offender deterrence (remove excuses). Although Chinese officers recognised the cost-effectiveness and tactical inclusiveness of these approaches, they also acknowledged the existence of worrying downsides, such as procedural injustice and crime displacement. This research contributes to criminological literature on cybercrime prevention by offering theoretical and practical insights for transnational fraud governance.